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Wednesday, 12 February 2014

That moment when...The Wesminster bubble is spiked by reality.

One thing that struck me about this
exchange on Channel 4 News yesterday (11 Feb) was its unwitting illustration of
the social distance characterized by the metaphor of the ‘Westminster bubble’.

For me the journalists doing the best work on social
policy right now are those who are able to pop this bubble, and in doing so, throw abstract
policy into stark relief to the lived reality of those on the receiving end.

The Guardian’s Amelia Gentleman is brilliant at this kind of reporting, as is Dawn Foster.
Their work stands out because people are central to their stories. The ‘human
interest’ angles they concoct attempt to bridge the social distance that exists between policy and reality.

Poppy Noor's exchange with Work and Pensions Select Committee Member, Nigel Mills MP, had the same
effect. It brought the government’s plan to strip young people of
their right to housing benefit up against reality.

'Well… this is just an idea… Er, we haven’t done all the detail on this yet.'

The implication being
that, at some point, all the detail will
be done.

But the idea of stripping benefit from the
under-25s isn’t a new one is it? In fact, the Conservatives have been ‘flying a
flag’ for this particular idea since at least summer 2012. I know this because, during
that very same summer, I attended a lobby of parliament organized by a group of young homeless people from Essex whose foyer home will become unaffordable should a future government decide to cut housing benefit for the under-25s.

At that event, two summers ago, I listened to another Tory MP make the same (at that point credible) excuse for the policy:

'Er… it’s just an idea… Er, we haven’t done the detail on this yet.'

It begs the questions: At what point will the detail be done? Isn’t it incumbent on a lawmaker who sits on the Work and Pensions Select Committee to get informed about the concrete effects such a policy is likely to have?

Once again we are back to the yawning gap
between the political class and society at large. To be fair, this isn’t just a
problem with MPs. I’ve witnessed the same chasm between abstract policy
and lived reality at most of the think tank events I’ve attended. I’ve felt it
in conversations I’ve had with some charities, I’ve seen
it at select committees, at the job centre etc.

It was vividly illustrated recently by the
Department for Work and Pensions' decision to appoint a former Policy Exchange
economist, Matthew Oakley, as the person best placed to carry out a review of
the way benefit sanctions are enforced (or, to be exact, the way the sanctions
are “communicated” to unemployed people).

Leave aside, for a moment, the fact that Oakley was himself influential in convincing the DWP to adopt harsher rules on benefit
conditionality in the first place (See ‘No Rights Without Responsibility’ –
Oakley & Saunders 2011 and ‘Something for Nothing’ - Doctor & Oakley 2011)*. And ignore, if you will, the fact that the conditionality rules themselves
are not up for discussion as part of this supposed 'review of sanctions'. Instead, consider Oakley’s CV and judge for
yourself whether he is likely to understand the reality of the impact his
abstract policy prescriptions have on people’s lives or
employment prospects.

Dr David Webster of Glasgow University, makes the point vividly in his response to the ‘Oakley
Review’

'The reviewer [Matthew Oakley] appointed in September 2013
apparently has some twelve years of work experience, exclusively in backroom
roles, split between the Treasury and a politically committed ‘think tank’ (Policy
Exchange).His recent appointment to the
Social Security Advisory Committee (January 2013) and move to Which? in October
2013 will as yet have done little to broaden this experience. Contrast, for
instance, the case of William Beveridge, who prior to attempting to influence national
policy went at the age of 24 to work at the Toynbee Hall settlement in the east
end of London, where
he found out a great deal about unemployment and unemployed people at first
hand.'